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In Brief: Writer's cramp is partly in your head - but where?

In Brief

Writer's cramp is partly in your head — but where?

Writer's cramp is a painful spasm that may afflict anyone who
wields a pen. Clearly writer's cramp involves hand muscles, but
its brain basis remains unclear.

Previous studies have suggested that the basal ganglia, a part of
the brain that plays an important role in motor coordination,
might be involved in writer's cramp. But more recent research is
implicating the cerebellum, which also helps to control movement
by activating a different neural network.

French researchers reported that they used imaging technology to
compare brain structures in 30 people with writer's cramp and 30
people without. They found that people with writer's cramp had
less "gray matter" (neurons) in areas of three brain regions —
the cerebellum, the thalamus, and the primary sensorimotor cortex
— that form a circuit controlling movement.